Facebook is working on Lasso a standalone app to compete TikTok

Facebook is working on another standalone app to compete with TikTok in order to grab the attention of teenagers. TikTok is the most popular 15-second video app which has recently purchase Musical.ly for a $1 billion acquisition by Chinese company ByteDance.

That’s why Facebook is trying to steal the market by building Lasso where users can record and share videos through lip syncing or dancing to popular songs, according to Facebook employees. The reports of new app revealed at the launch of Facebook’s new music features a few days back. The company added music stickers to its stories feature and lyrics to its Lip Sync Live feature which is already present in the app.

A source told to techcrunch, It’s basically TikTok/ Musically. It’s full-screen, built for teens, fun and funny and focused on creation, “A lot of what they’re doing is just trying to be cool.”

The new feature is being built by Facebook members and watch team under leadership from principal lead product designer Brady Voss. Previously, he had worked on Facebook TV app and at the same time shut down the HELLO standalone app.

Also, Facebook has been experimenting with the teen music app since 2016, then at the start of this year, Facebook’s music effort increased when they got license deals from all the major record companies. After that, they launched music stickers and soundtracks on Instagram stories, and today this feature rolled out in Facebook as well. The company is also working a Lip Sync Live feature for live-streaming karaoke, it will soon allow users to pin songs to their profile.

According to a survey, only 5 percent of U.S. teens enlist facebook as their favorite social media platform. Since 2016 the percentage dropped to 60 percent to 36 percent, Facebook needs new ways to engage people to their site apart from Whatsapp and Instagram.